"I'm straight up just saying we shouldn't have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, it hasn't made us more lethal, it has made fighting more complicated," Hegseth said.
He added: "As the disclaimer for everybody out there, we've all served with women and they're great. It's just our institutions don't have to incentivize that in places where traditionally, not traditionally, over human history, men in those positions are more capable."
Before this, Hegseth had argued that his position was about maintaining the standards of military units.
He said: "You had women truck drivers...or mechanics on these convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then they'd be ambushed or hit by IUDs and suddenly you have women in combat - that's maybe a modern reality in a 360 battlefield, that's different than intentionally saying 'we're gonna put women into combat roles so they will do the combat roles of men,' knowing that we've changed the standards in putting them there, which means you've changed the capability of that unit.
"And if you say you haven't, you're a liar. Because everybody knows, between bone density and lung capacity and muscle strength, men and women are just different."
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